By Marlene Houghton, BSc in Holistic Nutrition [High Hons]
H.I.Dip.Herbalism Adv.Herbalism Herbalism
C.H.Dip.NuTh
Memb.National College of Holistic Medicine

By now there will not be many people who have not been made aware of the European Union’s witchunt against natural medicine and its practitioners. First with the unscientific Food Supplement Directive passed into UK law by a Government more interested in corporate lobby groups than people’s health, and then by the equally restrictive Herbal Directive - our health choices have been narrowed.

However, not many people may be aware that the practitioners of natural medicine in the UK who have practised under Common Law since the time of Henry VIII and protected by Royal Charter since the 16th Century, are now under attack. The tools of their trade are being removed and they will eventually no longer be able to educate and advise clients in ways needed to make themselves healthier through preventative and corrective means.

Practitioners who have qualified with non-traditional schools of natural medicine that do not teach ‘nutrition-dogma’ are constantly ridiculed and derided. Their ‘qualifications’ are constantly being ‘examined’ by new government agencies set up by the EU and found ‘wanting’. You cannot open a newspaper or listen to a radio programme that does not bring on some ‘expert’ who pontificates that these so-called ‘practitioners’ are ‘not very well trained or qualified’. Trained and qualified in what? Certainly not orthodox medicine with its magic bullet approach of surgery or drugs. They do not claim to be ‘orthodox’. They are and always have been ‘alternative’. Some people want to be able to consult a naturopath or an aromatherapist in preference to an orthodox doctor, who may not have much to offer other than surgery and drugs. Up until now we all had this freedom of health choice but now the EU has intervened with its brutal assault on our freedoms via these unscientific and unjust Food Supplements and Herbal Directives in order to ‘harmonise’ us with their repressive laws. We have had a more liberal approach but as usual we have to fall into line with the EU not the other way around. Soon there will be no freedom of choice for patients with regard to what type of medical treatment they wish to have. The popular Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, started around 1830, is now in the process of being closed even though thousands of people have derived benefit from homeopathy and have signed a petition and written to their MPs. It is, as usual, to no avail.

With regard to health care, the European Union believes that only the medical profession [doctors] are entitled to practise health care and to treat illness. There is no such thing as medical pluralism in the EU only a medical dictatorship. This means that here in the UK we will be at an enormous disadvantage because neither the training nor degrees of alternative practitioners will be legally recognised. They will in fact be criminalised. There may be incompetent therapists in these areas but there are many incompetent medical doctors working in our hospitals who are protected and never struck off the register. I know because I have worked in hospitals for over twenty years, on every type of ward, dealing with all types of patients. I know that mainstream medicine cannot cure all ills and that there is room for other types of medicine as well.

There are many citizens in Europe who are unhappy about this situation and would prefer things to change but the EU is lobbied aggressively by the pharmaceutical giants and we can quite legitimately conclude that the interests of the pharmaceutical industry have prevailed over those of European citizens.

Who practises natural health? These modalities are practised by practitioners trained in any number of different healing practices. These include traditional naturopaths, homeopaths, aromatherapists, massage therapists, reflexologists, herbalists, iridologists, and nutritionists. None of these disciplines are recognised as having any validity unless a doctor administers them in the EU. Can you imagine in the beleaguered NHS, where people are dying unnecessarily because the system is so overloaded, that a GP would be able to perform an aromatherapy massage on a patient for stress? Or that a nurse who is so busy attending critically ill patients would have the time to perform a half hour reflexology session to balance the patient’s system? Or that she could spare two years or more training to qualify in one of these disciplines and that the taxpayer would fund it? The idea is ludicrous. The fact that people wish to consult these practitioners who practise their gentle arts without harm is something that upsets the dogmatic bureaucrats of Brussels. That is why they are imposing their authoritarian restrictions on the UK, plus the fact that they want an even playing field.

The idea that their citizens could cross over to the UK and purchase so many beneficial herbs and vitamins from our excellent independent health stores no doubt upsets them enormously. All this has been brought about by the fact that the EU now controls UK health. This type of political system foisted on the British people without their consent does not recognise any of the above healing modalities. In most of the member states none of these healing systems can be practised by anyone other than a licensed doctor who trained in a state-registered allopathic medical school. Only this type of training is allowed and has any legal status. If a natural therapist is caught they are deemed to be ‘practising medicine without a licence’ and can be arrested. Is this the system that we want here in the UK with our liberal natural health laws?

Unfortunately these destructive EU directives have resulted in our first prosecution of a vitamin seller. His crime? An intention to help people look after their health and to stay well. And his contraband? Substances on sale in the UK perfectly legally for decades but now illegal under EU law.

We have also seen a lot of hostile media coverage by the so-called ‘experts’ from mainstream medicine, just about everyone a Euro fanatic, who incidentally do not disclose their financial interests and what drug companies funds their grants. A little honesty from these ‘defenders of public safety’ would not come amiss. This is the typical EU propaganda that is put out in order to manipulate the public into thinking these therapies are a waste of time and to accept their removal.

One in particular who hails from Germany and is touted as an ‘expert’ in complementary medicine is particularly vocal against natural medicine. Strange for a professor of this type of medicine to be its most hostile critic. All he does is debunk it – he comes to bury it not to praise it. Forgive me if I am a little sceptical regarding his ‘alternative credentials’ because I have been unable to find out exactly where he qualified in all these alternative therapies that he claims to be an expert in. My colleagues and I in natural medicine have tried very hard to investigate where he qualified but we have drawn a blank every time.

Basically all of the above has come about because special interest groups in the EU want to drive out competitors and establish a monopoly that will serve to restrict consumer choice and to control people here in the UK as they do in the EU. There is no do-gooding about it. The idea that we need ‘protection’ for our ‘own good’ is the mantra all authoritarian governments have used against their citizens when they moved in to control them through public health measures. First these start with persuasion and then they end with coercion.

In a magazine put out by a very well known [European-owned] insurance group, they actually stated that the EU was set to clamp down on the sale of health supplements in the UK and they were actually gloating about this. I quote: ‘for the EU it is a matter of imposing its authority on a wayward market’. So we have a wayward market and the EU is imposing its authority, even though over one million supplement and natural health users wrote to their MPs and MEPs and signed petitions. And they call the EU a democracy? This magazine put out by the well known European health insurance company also states that ‘even if we feel the need to take supplements [and of course they feel we don’t as they know better] we must only take them sensibly, though EU legislation may soon give us no other choice’. So there we have it in a nutshell. I hope the angel dust has fallen from your eyes now at the hideous reality of what the EU is.

We must remember that the notorious Spanish Inquisition started in Europe and its Inquisitors burned and tortured all the heretics. They pursued the village healers burning thousands. These infamous witch hunts tried to stamp them all out, as they were a threat to the orthodox physicians of the time as well as the organised church who wanted to control them. Now it appears we are having a re-run of history and again the new Inquisitors come from Europe with a Witch Finder General called the EU.